Thanks to smartphone cameras, we are in a new era of brand accountability where no longer are brands simply subject to customer loyalty.

In 1965, United Airlines invited us to "Fly the Friendly Skies," and in 2013 resurrected this familiar theme accompanied by Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue."

Today, United is feeling neither friendly nor rhapsodic.

Unless you've been living under a rock for the last 48 hours, you've witnessed the sickening horror of a paying passenger (a physician no less) being roughed-up, bleeding and dragged from a United Airlines plane simply because he refused to give up his seat to a United employee.

Aside from utterly ridiculous and absurd behavior on the part of the airline's employees and police summoned to, ahem, escort said paying passenger off the plane, the real story is from a brand marketing perspective.

United Airlines, as all major international brands, spends millions to burnish and promote its brand in a highly cut-throat category of air travel. To be fair, we must remember (even this egregious miscarriage of "customer relations") that airlines must do business by transporting millions of us every single day in a post-9/11 world.

But no matter what business you're in or what world you do it in, the customer is still the customer — many of whom still subscribe to that quaint, old fashioned notion that the customer is always right.

And the customer, as any marketer will admit, is the true "owner" of the brand. This is an essential point that United management, at least thus far, seems to have forgotten, by being quick to side with its employees in need of sensitivity training.

And the brand's rejection is occurring faster than it took to drag the good doctor to the jetway.

What has changed the brand reputation management calculus is the smart phone. Just as angry protesters are smart phone-ready to document any police misconduct, horrified customers are ready to document any brand stupidity.

Within a matter of minutes, the entire world witnesses the thuggish brutality, screams and blood on a packed jet perpetrated on an innocent passenger, broadcast on a continuous loop by cable news hungry for ratings.

School teachers, insurance execs and car mechanics are turned into news reporters with the tap on the video record button. And millions in marketing dollars and stock valuation flies right out the window.

We are in a new era of brand accountability. No longer are brands simply subject to the ebb and flow of customer loyalty based purely on product or service quality and value in the marketplace.